WELL-POISONING is the act of malicious manipulation of potable water
resources in order to cause illness or death, or to deny an opponent
access to fresh water resources.

Well poisoningWell poisoning has been historically documented as strategy during
wartime since antiquity , and was used both offensively (as a terror
tactic to disrupt and depopulate a target area) and defensively (as a
scorched earth tactic to deny an invading army sources of clean
water). Rotting corpses (both animal and human) thrown down wells were
the most common implementation; in one of the earliest examples of
biological warfare , corpses known to have died from common
transmissible diseases of the Pre-Modern era such as bubonic plague or
tuberculosis were especially favored for well-poisoning.

Additionally, well poisoning was one of the three gravest antisemitic
accusations made against Jews during this period (the other two being
host desecration and blood libel ). Similar accusations were also made
of
KoreansKoreans living in
JapanJapan in the aftermath of the 1923 Great Kantō
earthquake . In both cases the accusation was never substantiated, but
did lead to widescale persecution and pogroms against the group so
accused.

THIS SECTION NEEDS EXPANSION. You can help by adding to it . (June
2008)

Well poisoningWell poisoning has been used as an important scorched earth tactic at
least since ancient times. In 1462, for example, Prince Vlad III the
Impaler of
WallachiaWallachia utilized this method to delay his pursuing
Ottoman Turk adversaries. Whilst retreating through Turkish-controlled
BulgariaBulgaria , across the
DanubeDanube River and back to the capital of
WallachiaWallachia that same year, Vlad's army employed the poisoning of wells
and other sources of water, as well as other scorched earth tactics en
route to his country on both sides of the Danube, meaning that he
deliberately polluted the water supplies of his fellow Romanians even
at the cost of their lives if it slowed down his Muslim foes. Nearly
500 years later during the
Winter WarWinter War , the Finns rendered wells
unusable by planting animal carcasses or feces in them in order to
passively combat invading Soviet forces. During the 20th century, the
practice of poisoning wells has lost most of its potency and
practicality against an organized force as modern military logistics
ensure secure and decontaminated supplies and resources. Nevertheless,
German forces during First World War poisoned wells in France as part
of Operation Alberich . A few religions have laws condemning such
scorched earth tactics. Most notably
IslamIslam , in its scripture,
dictates that water-bodies may not be poisoned even during a battle
and enemies must be allowed access to water.

Despite some vague understanding of how diseases could spread, the
existence of viruses and bacteria was unknown in medieval times, and
the outbreak of disease could not be scientifically explained. Any
sudden deterioration of health was often blamed on poisoning. Europe
was hit by several waves of
Black DeathBlack Death (often identified as bubonic
plague ) throughout the late Middle Ages. Crowded cities were
especially hard hit by the disease, with death tolls as high as 50% of
the population. In their distress, emotionally distraught survivors
searched desperately for an explanation. The city-dwelling Jews of the
Middle Ages, living in walled-up, segregated ghetto districts, aroused
suspicion . An outbreak of plague thus became the trigger for Black
Death persecutions , with hundreds of Jews burned at the stake, or
rounded up in synagogues and private houses that were then set aflame.
With the decline of plague in Europe, these accusations lessened, but
the term "well-poisoning" remains a loaded one that continues to crop
up even today among anti-Semites around the world.

Walter Laqueur writes in his book The Changing Face of Anti-Semitism:
From Ancient Times to the Present Day:

There were no mass attacks against "Jewish poisoners" after the
period of the Black Death, but the accusation became part and parcel
of antisemitic dogma and language. It appeared again in early 1953 in
the form of the "doctors\' plot " in Stalin's last days, when hundreds
of Jewish physicians in the Soviet Union were arrested and some of
them killed on the charge of having caused the death of prominent
Communist leaders... Similar charges were made in the 1980s and 1990s
in radical Arab nationalist and Muslim fundamentalist propaganda that
accused the Jews of spreading
AIDSAIDS and other infectious diseases .

NAKAM PLOT

This section may LEND UNDUE WEIGHT TO CERTAIN IDEAS, INCIDENTS, OR
CONTROVERSIES. Please help to create a more balanced presentation.
Discuss and resolve this issue before removing this message. (June
2016)

This article NEEDS ADDITIONAL CITATIONS FOR VERIFICATION . Please
help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources .
Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (June 2016) (Learn
how and when to remove this template message )

At the end of World War II, Lithuanian Jew
Abba Kovner was one of the
founders of a secret organization
Nakam (revenge), also known as Dam
Yisrael Noter ("the blood of Israel avenges", with the acronym DIN
meaning "judgement") whose purpose was to seek revenge for the
HolocaustHolocaust . Two plans were formulated. Plan A was to kill a large
number of German citizens by poisoning the water supplies of Hamburg,
Frankfurt, Munich, and Nuremberg. Plan B was to kill SS prisoners held
in Allied POW camps. In pursuit of Plan A, members of the group were
infiltrated into water and sewage plants in several cities, while
Kovner went to Palestine in search of a suitable poison. Kovner
discussed
Nakam with Yishuv leaders, though it is not clear how much
he told them and he doesn't seem to have received much support.
According to Kovner's own account,
Chaim WeizmannChaim Weizmann approved the idea
and put him in touch with the scientist Ernst Bergmann, who gave the
job of preparing poison to
Ephraim Katzir (later president of Israel)
and his brother Aharon. Historians have expressed doubt over
Weizmann's involvement, since he was overseas at the time Kovner
specified. The Katzir brothers confirmed that they gave poison to
Kovner, but said that he only mentioned Plan B and they denied that
Weizmann could be involved. As Kovner and an accomplice were returning
to Europe on a British ship, they threw the poison overboard when
Kovner was arrested. He was imprisoned for a few months in Cairo and
Plan A was abandoned, meaning no well poisoning had actually occurred.

CONTEMPORARY ACCUSATIONS

This section may LEND UNDUE WEIGHT TO CERTAIN IDEAS, INCIDENTS, OR
CONTROVERSIES. Please help to create a more balanced presentation.
Discuss and resolve this issue before removing this message. (June
2016)

In recent years, unconfirmed reports of well contamination by Israeli
settlers in the
West BankWest Bank have surfaced. Cases include that of rotting
chicken carcases found in a well at
At-tuwani near
HebronHebron in 2004,
although suspected settlers blamed Arab infighting. In the following
years, various NGOs reported similar occurrences, accusing settlers of
deliberately contaminating cisterns.

In his address to the
European ParliamentEuropean Parliament on June 23, 2016, in
Brussels, Palestinian Authority president and
PLO chairman Mahmoud
Abbas made an unsubstantiated allegation, "accusing rabbis of
poisoning Palestinian wells". Invoked by false media reports
claiming, Israeli rabbis are inciting for poisoning water of
Palestinians, lead allegedly by a rabbi Shlomo Mlma or Mlmad from the
Council of Rabbis in the
West BankWest Bank settlements. A rabbi by that name
could not be located, nor is such an organization listed. Abbas said:
"Only a week ago, a number of rabbis in Israel announced, and made a
clear announcement, demanding that their government poison the water
to kill the Palestinians (..) Isn’t that clear incitement to commit
mass killings against the Palestinian people?" The speech received a
standing ovation. The speech was described as "echoing anti-Semitic
claims". A day later, on Saturday June 26, Abbas admitted that "his
claims at the EU were baseless". Abbas' further claimed that he
"didn't intend to do harm to Judaism or to offend Jewish people around
the world." Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin NetanyahuBenjamin Netanyahu stated in
reaction, that Abbas had spread a “blood libel ” in his European
Parliament address.